Why low calorie diets will make you fat

Science shows that diets that restrict calories can actually make it harder to lose fat and keep it off.  Learn how to stop the never-ending struggle with stubborn fat in your womens fitness routine.

Being a woman is tougher than ever with all the hype and “1 strange weight loss tip” on the market. Celebrity diets have populated the magazines; even gaining favor in television shows.

Horrible!

Low calorie diets rave how “normal” people like you and me can look just like celebrities.  But do you really want to be starved of nutrients, while your hormones are completely unbalanced, causing feelings of helplessness and depression?

“Everything in moderation.”

Ever hear that one? Although there is some weak truth to that, eating everything in moderation will keep you overweight!

Women all over the world are suffering from eating disorders who are clearly unaware of having one. If you’re skipping meals or eating very little in order to lose weight….STOP!!

These actions will only make you pack on the pounds, sometimes at rapid rates.

FACT

Eating less than your body requires will slow your metabolism, making weight loss impossible and will negatively affect your health.

As you have heard, breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and yet many people still confess to eating only a piece of fruit for breakfast.

THE SCIENCE

Food is used for energy, cell structure, regulating hormones and chemical reactions. 

Food takes one of three directions upon ingestion: energy use, storage, or excretion.

The body receives energy from carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. If our stores of carbohydrates and fats are in short supply, our body will turn to muscle for breakdown of amino acids (stored proteins) for energy, causing muscle atrophy.

Let’s Not Be Mean But Who Looks Better?  Higher Calorie Girl or Lower Calorie Girl?

Calorie Counter for Women

LOW CALORIES = MUSCLE WASTING

            •           Low Carbohydrate diets deplete the liver and muscle of energy, which causes muscle wasting, lack of energy, and will compromise your health.

            •           Low Calorie diets, while reducing body weight (usually for a short period of time), will ultimately poorly affect your health and in most cases will have a rebound effect.

            •           Low calories will reduce muscle mass and strength.

When nutrient intake is low, the metabolic rate will become low for three reasons:

Decreased thyroid function, reduced thermic effect of eating and reduction in muscle mass.

While reductions in muscle mass causes a lack of endurance (especially during exercise), in turn will lead to osteoporosis and lack of independence as you age.

The Worst Part: FAT STORAGE

Fat storage is the largest form of storage in the body. Low calorie diets, and long waits in between meals, signal the body that starvation is occurring. With this signaling, the body will turn on the storage mode.

Eating every 2-4 hours has been researched to show a positive effect on body composition and overall heath.  Frequent eating boosts metabolism, regulates blood sugars and maintains muscle mass.

Expert Nutritionists believe obesity occurs from a lack of nutrients in diets. Hunger never subsides as the body is signaling for nutrition to be ingested.  We are seeing vitamin deficiency diseases come back that haven’t been around for decades.

Your body doesn’t understand what to do with processed foods. Diets high in sugar, sodium and processed foods do not seem to signal the body of being full and therefore leads to hunger.

THE SKINNY

EATING TOO LITTLE IS WEIGHT LOSS SUICIDE

Eating fewer calories than body requirement will deprive your body of essential nutrients that will poorly influence your health.  If you have any questions, I always welcome them below.  Keep your questions specific to the article content above.

– Flavia Del Monte

R.N., C.P.T., PN Certified

What you must understand about calorie counting

Can you get away with just “eating healthy” or do counting calories really make a difference in losing fat?  Is calorie counting better than counting “portions”  Should you be relying on a food journal?  Is calorie counting the price you must pay to get the body you always wanted?  Here’s what you must understand about calorie counting and the good news is that you won’t need to become a number-crunching food fanatic in your quest for a useful womens fitness plan!

Calorie counting had been around for as long as we can all remember.  Today a lot of diet programs recommend “portions” because counting every single calorie in the literal sense will drive you insane and it’s not a long-term lifestyle solution.

I have no problem with people counting portions because it recognizes the importance of portion control and affirms that calories do matter.  On the other hand, be careful of anybody who tells you that “calories don’t matter” and you can “eat whatever you want as long it’s healthy” and still lose fat.

I’m living proof that this logic is flawed.  Marketers will continue to tell you what you wish to hear in hopes that you pull out your credit card and buy their new gimmick.

The Reasons Why Calorie Counting Doesn’t Work Are

Quite Detailed So Lets Look At It As Simple As Possible…

A Calorie is defined as the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one kg of water by one degree.

The only way to truly test this measurement is by measuring the combustion of food. How many food products are in the grocery store?  And how many of them do you believe determine the exact Caloric count?  Not many.

Therefore it can be assumed the food labels on products are a mereestimates.

Bottom line: calorie counting and meal plans are simply an educated guess. They are simply a starting point to assess what changes must take place next.

Let’s add in the factors of digestion and absorption lose with food ingestion and you have a very difficult caloric equation to figure out.

On the other end of things, determining how many calories the body needs is also a difficult task. Sure there are estimated equations but those do not take into account basal metabolic rate, resting metabolic rate, thermogenesis effect, purposeful exercise and our daily exercise expenditure from activities of daily living (ADL).

Although I do believe calorie counting is useful, it is an estimate and focusing on calories, instead of quality of our food is usually the problem. Learning to replace old habits with better ones should be our focus.

– Flavia Del Monte

P.S. Let me know if “calorie counting” has helped or hurt your progress.  I would love to know your experience below.

What is the best type of cardio to burn fat faster?

The simple answer to this question can boil down to a number of complicated factors, but let’s shoot straight - it really boils down to one question: Which type do you want to do?

Unless you’re stepping on stage or getting ready for a photo shoot in a few weeks then one of the key factors in determining your cardio type should be what you enjoy doing.

My husband hates doing cardio so he- would say, “I don’t have any kind of cardio I enjoy doing.”  However, an easy solution for him is to listen to one of his motivational CD’s on his iPod to mask the boredom.  It’s funny because he’ll tell me, “I didn’t want to stop my cardio today until I finished my audio!”

Before we dive into the science, keep in mind the “best” type of cardio is the type you’ll actually do.  This is a motto I apply to my training and even nutrition for that matter.  It’s often better to stick to what’s “enjoyable” rather than what’s “ideal” for long-term results.

Best Cardio To Burn Fat Fast

Your Two Cardio Options

There are essentially two types of cardio: high-intensity and steady-state. Before we go any further, let’s make sure we’re on the same page as to how we define each of these two.

Often, when I mention high-intensity cardio to someone, they immediately say, “Yeah, the cardio I do is high-intensity.”

Then I ask them how long their intervals are and they either look at me like I’m from another planet, or they think they miss understood what I’m asking and say “I go for 30 minutes.”

Wrong answer, Private, wrong answer.

High-intensity, at least as for purposes of this article, is defined as something so intense that you couldn’t keep it up for more than 60 seconds — no matter how badly you wanted to! So even though your incline treadmill walk may feel like “high-intensity cardio,” it isn’t.

Running at 10 mph on a 10 degree incline for 10 seconds; now that is high-intensity!

Now that we’re on the same page as to the definition, you can clearly see that to do high-intensity cardio, you’d have to do it in spurts — do some, rest, then do some more, and so on. That’s exactly what we call high-intensity interval training, or HIIT (pronounced “hit”).

When most people think of cardio, they think of steady-state cardio. For that reason, I often simply refer to it as regular cardio. Since high-intensity cardio has it own, cool acronym, let’s refer to steady-state cardio as “SSC.”

Steady-state cardio is any cardio that’s done at an intensity low enough that it can be maintained for a longer period of time. While you may warm-up and cool-down, any cardio session where you keep roughly the same pace throughout your session is steady-state.

That’s right, even if you’re sweatin’ like a whore in church, it’s still not high-intensity if you can do if for more than a few minutes.

What you probably don’t know, is that while you are slowly burning “some” calories, others[1] are stripping twice as much fat off their bodies and in half the time!

FACT

You can burn fat 2x FASTER  and in HALF the time by incorporating High Intensity Training (HIT) into your exercise routine.

• Cardiovascular exercise (slow and at a steady pace) burns much fewer calories than HITT
• Doing too much cardio is tough on your joints and ligaments.
• Too much cardio will result in burning muscle instead of fat.

THE SCIENCE

When it comes to weight loss, it doesn’t matter what type of fuel (food) you use. What matters is how many calories you burn as opposed to how many calories you take in.

As already stated; In order to lose fat, you must have a negative energy expenditure. Simple!

Energy out  >  Energy in

The Basics of Burning Fat

Our energy comes from fat, carbs and protein.  But which one our bodies utilizes depends on the kind of activity we are preforming.

Now, most people want to use fat for energy. Sounds legitimate, as we assume, the more fat we can use as fuel, the less fat we’ll have in our bodies. But using more fat doesn’t automatically lead to losing more fat.

Understanding the best way to burn fat starts with some basic facts on HOW your body gets its energy:

• The body primarily uses carbs and fats for fuel. A small amount of protein is used during exercise, but protein is mainly used to repair the muscles after exercise.
• The ratio of these fuels will shift depending on the activity you are doing.
• Given the metabolic pathways available to break down carbs for energy are more efficient than the pathways available for fat breakdown, the body will rely more on carbs for fuel than fat during HIT. This is good.
• For long, slower exercise, fat is used more for energy than carbs.

When it comes to weight loss, it doesn’t matter what type of fuel you use. What matters is how many calories you burn as opposed to how many calories you take in.

That said…..you burn WAY more calories during High Intensity Training than your standard aerobic exercise.

Think about it this way: When you sit or sleep, you’re in your prime fat-burning mode. But, you’ve probably never contemplated the idea of sleeping more to lose weight, as lovely as that thought is.

The bottom line: Just because you’re using more fat as energy doesn’t mean you’re burning more calories.

THE SKINNY

The more intense the workout, and the more muscles utilized, and the more oxygen is consumed as muscles use energy when they contract. The more oxygen is consumed, the more energy is expended; the more calories you burn!

Flavia Del Monte,

R.N., C.P.T., PN Certified (Sports and Exercise Nutrition)

P.S. Don’t forget to leave me your comments or questions below!

The truth about females and lifting heavy weights

Expressing fear of building muscle and looking like a man by merely hitting the weights is like me saying “I don’t want to play golf because I’m afraid I’ll turn pro….”

Nothing just happens – including building muscle!  If your body was destined to look like a man,than you would probably already know it!  Genetics don’t change over night….

Unless you have a river of testosterone flowing in your blood, the fear of getting big is unfounded!  Competitive female bodybuilders train at least three hours a day and perform 20-30 sets PER body part with their womens fitness programs in hopes of getting a fraction of the size of their male counterparts.

GETTING BIG IS NO EASY TASK FOR A FEMALE…  and if it were than you would see Jane swinging from the vines and swimming with the alligators, not Tarzan!

Simply put, this myth has no scientific backbone. It is very hard for most men to build muscle; let alone women. I hear of men who are eating thousands of calories and lifting heavy weight but don’t put a pound of lean muscle mass on their bodies. Yet, females are afraid lifting weights will make them look like a man!

Little-Known FACT

Not only lifting weight, but lifting heavy weight will give you definition and that toned look that is desired from EVERY female all over the world.

YOU CANNOT LOOK LIKE A MAN FROM LIFTING HEAVY WEIGHTS, UNLESS YOU TRY (REALLY HARD) TO DO SO, INJECT TESTOSTERONE INTO YOUR BUTT OR A GENETIC FREAK!

THE Cold-Hard SCIENCE

First off, men have 10 to 30 times higher levels of testosterone than females.

Women do not have a large testosterone production in their body, making it impossible to build muscle at the same intensity as a male. A male is made up of a lot more muscle than women. 23% of a women’s weight is muscle, compared to 40% of a male’s weight.

Women simply do not have the genetics to build muscle and the women that have done so, have done so by genetically altering their bodies.

I can take a guess that most women want a TONED look. When your muscles look etched, it is because of a low percentage of fat around that muscle.

Toning and muscle building is one in the same!

There are 3 ways growth occurs in muscles:

            •  during resistance training (followed with precise nutrition)

            •  natural growth period (such as puberty)

            •  during pregnancy

In order to build lean mass, you must have an excess of calories:

energy in > energy out

That said, in order build muscle, you MUST tailor your diet for muscle building. That applies to women who want to “TONE”.

You have to first BUILD the muscle in order to have a toned look.

Increase in CALORIES + lifting heavy = muscle mass

There are three different body types:

            •  ectomorph (naturally thin)

            •  mesomorph (naturally muscular)

            •  endomorph (naturally broad and thick)

All three different body types need to eat and train a certain way in order to build muscle and lose fat.

The issue here is that there is only so much storage in a muscle. You need to lift heavy weight in order to increase the size of your muscle.

If, in the unlikely chance of too much muscle being built, all you would need to do is drop the weight, and take in less calories.

THE SKINNY

Resistance training is essential to a balanced and effective training program. You need to lift heavy in order to build muscle.

You cannot change your genetics to the degree to look like a man if you are a women unless you are “trying” to do so by working out at least 2-3 hours a day and lifting 20-30 sets per body part.  I am guessing you don’t do that? I didn’t think so, so flush that fear down the toilet.

Questions for Flavia?  Post them below.  Please keep your questions SPECIFIC to the topic of this article.  Thanks

–Flavia Del Monte

R.N., C.P.T., PN Certified